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The Vampire Diaries S03E09 Recap

Yes, you caught me: I am totally skipping the recap for Ordinary People because yawn. I mean, whatever, you’ve got emo bad-hair Klaus and bouncy cheerleader Rebekah and an ENORMOUS amount of Original Vamp backstory (which doesn’t correspond with anything actually resembling canon) and, I don’t know, Mikael grabbing Damon’s heart (right there in the bar! Rude) and threatening to rip it out. Oh yeah, and Damon deciding that what Stefan really needs is a boy’s night to get over all that pesky compulsion. But you could learn all that from the previouslies. The only POSSIBLY compelling scene involves like 6 seconds of Damon shimmying on a bar, and there’s YouTube for that. MOVING ON.

This is the midseason finale, which means, of course, that there will be a dance. Isn’t there always a dance?

Oh, you know. Just hanging out. Daggering people. What are YOU doing?

We open on a phone call. Klaus answers, launching without preamble into a speech about how lovely Portland is, aside from the whiny music and the healthy-looking people: “A literal breeding ground for werewolves.” As I am from Portland myself, I can only say, “…that’s fair.”

Stefan gets right to the point. “Your father’s dead. Sorry, not your father. Not dead. Daggered.”

I’d like to mention, before we get too far into this, how very much I dislike the use of the word daggered. It’s just, what’s wrong with stabbed? Skewered? Semi-fatally shishkebabed? You will hear the word daggered a lot in this episode, and it’s safe to say that each time you do I die a little on the inside.

Back to the show. Klaus has a look of utter and total disbelief on his face, like someone surprised him with a pony. A pony made of…blood? Not the best analogy. Also ponies are already full of blood. Anyway, Klaus demands an explanation, and we flash back to an hour earlier.

Stefan, Elena and Damon are hatching the scheme in a very Scooby-Do manner, each of them jumping in to complete the other’s sentences.

Crazy eyes. Couldn't resist.

Stefan: “Say that Mikael followed Elena in here and tried to grab her so he could use her as bait.”
Elena: “And you, what? Vervained him?”
Damon: “We vervained him. Guy’s an Original. We have to make it realistic.”
Stefan: “Okay, fine. We vervained him. And in the process, discovered that he had a dagger.”
Elena: “Which he planned to use on Rebekah, but instead -”
Stefan: “We drove it through his heart.”

See, isn’t drove it through his heart better than daggered?

Then they get to the pesky part about the body, and how if they tell Klaus that Daddy Dearest is dead, he’ll want to see it.

“Then I shall be dead,” says Mikael, because Mikael knows how to make an entrance. “You lure him here, and I will kill him.”

Stefan wants to know how Mikael plans to kill Klaus, seeing as the daggers don’t work on him. Sharing time!

Just how many of these things are there?

“I’m in possession of a stake fashioned from the wood of the white oak tree.” Papa Original says. How interesting. So he turned all of his children into vampires to keep them alive, but held onto the one thing that could make them dead? Nice guy, that Mikael. He then exposits about how if another vamp daggers an Original the vamp gets all dead-like, in case we all forgot, so it’s up to Elena to do the honors. He hands her the dagger and she looks queasy.

Back in present time, Klaus indeed does want to see his father’s “rotting corpse,” oh yes. “Well, it’s here,” Stefan deadpans. “Drop by whenever.”

Hour-back flashback: Elena stabs Mikael. He goes all green and veiny while Stefan watches from a chair, his expression never changing. “It’s true,” present-moment Stefan says. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

Klaus demands that they put his sister on the phone. (Oh, did I forget to mention that the larger point of last week’s episode is that Elena figured out that Klaus had been the one to kill Mama Original & had lied and said that Mikael did it? Yeah, my bad. Rebekah is on the side of not-Klaus now.) She confirms Mikael’s deadness and adds “I miss you. I’m miserable here.” That last bit is almost certainly true.

Klaus says he’ll be there soon. After they hang up the phone, everyone looks pensive, and then Damon jinxes it by saying “Was that easy or what?”

Elena says “Let’s just get this over with” and pulls out the dagger. Which…okay. I guess that makes sense. Title card.

Rebekah does not appreciate your poor parenting skills.

Coughing. Papa Original sits up to see his daughter watching him. “Finally,” she says flatly. “Took you long enough.” Rebekah isn’t in the mood for family bonding time, though: “Whatever fatherly rubbish you’re thinking, save it. Nothing you say matters to me.”

“Elena has it,” Rebekah tells him. “So you can forget about your plans to use it on me.”

“You were never the one that I was after,” he begins, but she’s having none of it. She tells him that Nick was her family, and that the only reason any of them turned into killers is that Mikael made them that way.

At Casa Gilbert, Elena is wearing some awesome red boots that I totally want and bemoaning the state of her wardrobe, which includes nothing to wear to homecoming. Bonnie is somewhat less than sympathetic. “So don’t go,” she says. Wouldn’t it be WAY more fun to order takeout and overanalyze ancient hieroglyphics? Which coincidentally is what Bonnie, dateless, will be doing. Because who ever goes anywhere without a booooooy?

“We have to go,” Elena says. “Caroline will kill us.” Isn’t that like 80% of the reason anyone does anything ever on this show? I know I have said this before, but Caroline is a force of nature.

Bonnie makes sad noises about how sad it is that she is sadly dateless, and Elena remembers that she’s supposed to care about that. “You know that you can talk to me about Jeremy, right?” she says.

"You know how I totally supported you when you and Stefan were - what?"

Bonnie does not, in fact, know that, and lays out several reasons why, including the fact that Bonnie’s mad at the boy who broke her heart while Elena is mad at her little brother. Which – valid, except ALSO Bonnie’s the one who went and DATED said ‘little brother,’ so she’s at least partially culpable for her current inability to girltalk with her bff. Also, this is BONNIE. The girl who was all “Whatevs, you’re having a personal crisis but I don’t like your boyfriend so I am going to be a complete bitch to you.” Back then it was Elena’s fault for dating someone Bonnie didn’t approve of. Now it’s Elena’s fault for…being related to the dude Bonnie’s sadfacing over?

"All anyone says is what I want to hear. That's not weird, right?"

The next scene has Elena in Damon’s room making wolfsbane grenades and looking much less miserable than she was with Bonnie. I like to imagine that she skedaddled pretty much directly after their little heart-to-heart: Yeah. So, if that’s it, I’m just gonna head over to the Salvatore place now. What? No reason.In any event, she and Damon are discussing the fact that neither of them trusts Rebekah. “Bonnie was right,” Elena says. “Rebekah may be mad at Klaus now, but he is her brother.” Which…isn’t what Bonnie said at all. Way to totally misinterpret that whole conversation, Elena. No wonder no one talks to you.

“I am formulating a secret contingency plan,” Damon tells her.

“Really? What is it?”

“Well if I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret.” Point: Damon.

Stefan picks that moment to barge in. “I need to borrow a tie,” he says. Damon suggests he wear one of his own ties, but Stefan points out that he’s 162 years old and going to a homecoming dance: “I need better ties.”

“You could not go,” Elena tries.

No dice; Klaus wants Elena protected, and “with my luck you’ll go ahead and get yourself murdered by the Homecoming Queen.” Point: Stefan, but how come Damon didn’t just go as her date? I’m not being all shippy here; I seriously don’t get why Stefan is escorting her to the dance at all, except to be all MUAH HA HA I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE and also AM EVIL.

Stefan wanders off, presumably in possession of one of Damon’s ties, and Damon reaches over to disentangle Elena from a grenade. “I know how to do it – Alaric taught me,” she protests, but Damon points out that if these things blow up in their faces, only one of them heals quickly.

I was wrong before about the Stefan and the leaving; he comes back in with several ties draped over his hand and makes disapproving noises about their commitment to sparkle motion. “Please tell me you have a better plan than wolfsbane grenades,” he says. Shut up, Stefan. Your contribution of late has been to look vaguely constipated, so at least their plan involves actually doing something. “My freedom from Klaus rests entirely upon you two executing your plan perfectly, so excuse me if I’m a bit cynical,” he snarks.

Elena points out that Stefan’s the weak link in the chain. “If Klaus asks you one wrong question, the whole thing falls apart.”

“If I look back on our history of epic plan failures, it’s usually because one of us let our humanity get in the way,” Stefan says. Burn. Actually, Elena looks kind of like she’s going to cry, but I think it’s more Stefan’s snarky use of the word epic than his suggestion that humans are weak.

At the school, Tyler and Caroline are painting a psychedelic bus with glitter for some reason. Seriously, that’s…an odd thing to do. Why are they doing that? Tyler, who is in a very, very good mood, wants to go “have a bite” with Caroline. She says she has a thermos in her bag, but Tyler had something a bit less…bottled in mind. “Rebekah knows some people who like to be fed on,” he says. “They’re into it, we don’t even have to compel them.”

Caroline is squicked. “Okay, first of all, I finally almost just got your mother to stop hating me, so I probably don’t want to get caught in some weird vampire threesome with her son.” I love that that’s her first reason. “And secondly, quit hanging out with Rebekah the evil blood slut.”

Probably not the best time for Tyler to mention that Rebekah’s going to the Homecoming Dance with Matt. But Tyler, he’s not so much with the smarts. “He drinks vervain, she can’t feed on him,” Tyler says, like that’s the only possible reason Caroline could object to an ancient vengeful vampire taking her ex-boyfriend on a date.

“Matt is an innocent, good person who should not be going to dances with evil blood sluts,” Caroline says.

“Matt’s a guy, Caroline, and Rebekah’s hot. Don’t over think this.” Did I mention how Typer is not so much with the smarts?

Caroline narrows her eyes and points at him with a paintbrush. “This is a sire thing, isn’t it?”

Tyler doesn’t want to go down this road. “I’m here hanging streamers and I have glitter all over my hands. If I’m sired to anyone, it’s you.” Oh hey Tyler I don’t think that’s – never mind. If the writers of the show can misuse the sire concept in the first place, far be it for me to point out how utterly idiotic this latest one sounds.

Back at the boarding house, Rebekah tells Elena the ’embarrassing truth’ that this is her first high-school dance. Um…duh? She was born in the time of Vikings and daggered in the 1920s and also why should a thousand-year-old vampire give a crap about going to a dance? I felt a lot more sympathy toward Anna when she was trying to braincloud Jeremy in Season One because at least she’d been around all that time, not going to dances.

Let's be best best friends and then I will kill you. Wait, which one of us said that?

She does look nice in her dress, though. She says she’s getting ready early because she didn’t want to leave anything to chance. She and Elena have a heart-to-heart about Klaus & Rebekah says that Mikael is dangerous and can’t be trusted: “No one in my family can.” She then tells Elena, “I’ve spent my whole life loving and hating my brother in equal measure. I never thought that I’d be the one to help drive a stake through his heart.” She turns, shakes off sudden tears, not wanting to ruin her makeup, asks Elena how she looks.

Elena says she looks amazing, and tells her that one thing is missing. She puts the locket that belonged to Rebekah’s mother around her neck. Rebekah looks as though she’s going to lose it at any moment, so after fastening the necklace Elena does what any good friend would: she sticks a dagger through Rebekah’s back.

Damon comes to help cover up the body. “In the back. Harsh,” he says admiringly. “It’s very Katherine of you.”

“Not the way to make me feel better about myself, Damon,” says Elena, who is having some sort of crisis on the bed.

“It was a compliment. Sort of,” he says.

Elena is busy running other people’s lines through her Elena-filter. “Stefan’s right. Someone is going to let their humanity get in the way and screw this whole thing up, and it’s probably going to be me.” So, what, you decided to channel your inner soulless vamp doppelganger? Certainly that can’t have any downsides.

Damon comes and sits next to her on the bed. Elena asks if he trusts Mikael or Stefan; Damon says he doesn’t. “Then we need a better plan,” she says.

So this plan involves me trying to make an expression at you? Awesome.

“I know what to do,” Damon tells her. “You’re just not going to like it.”

Elena wants to know what the plan is, but Damon says he doesn’t want her to have any part of it. “Do you trust me?” he asks her.

“Yes,” she says. Instant.

“Then you have nothing to worry about.”

So it was totally Tyler who flooded the gym, y/y?I love how he pretty much just accepts the worst right off the bat.

Outside the high school, there are emergency crews and spraying water and what’s that, Tyler? The dance is cancelled? Caroline looks like she’s going to explode, but Tyler gives her a look and a moment later she’s on the phone with Elena, telling her Tyler’s moved the party to his house. Elena’s still at the Salvatore’s, and there’s a knock at the door; she hangs up with Caroline and opens the door to see Matt looking all expectant. Expectant, and crushed. He’s immediately aware of the fact that the door has been opened not by his date but by his ex, and there’s really not a good direction this can go.

Except: “How would you feel about a backup date?”

At the Wolf House the party is going strong. There’s a band I’m not hip enough to recognize and an absolute sea of people, all of whom appear to be having at least a modicum of fun. Caroline walks in with Bonnie, a look of appalled disbelief on her face: “How did he plan a better party than me so fast?”

“Who are all these people?” Bonnie asks. Oh, I don’t know, maybe they’re your classmates who you’ve ignored the last two years? Just an idea.

Good evening, dead and soon-to-be dead people!

Caroline goes off to find Tyler and demand an explanation for his superior party-planning skills, while outside Stefan is stalking around looking for…Elena, probably, just so he can remind her how much he doesn’t care if she drops dead right this minute. Instead he runs into Tyler, who gleefully tells him that the party wasn’t his idea: it was Klaus’. And it’s not a party; it’s a wake.

Elena's hair looks lovely, doesn't it?

Caroline finds Matt and Elena, who have just had the “no this is totally not awkward” conversation, and announces that Klaus is the one behind all of this. At their non-reactions, she says “I expected more surprise!” Elena shakes her head, says she’s learned not to be surprised by anything Klaus does. Except when he does the Macarena! No one expects that.

Outside, OTP Klaus and Stefan are strolling along together. “I’ve been planning my father’s funeral for a thousand years,” Klaus says. “Granted in no version of it were any of these people invited, but you get the idea.”

Stefan wants to know what Klaus has planned next, because Stefan is subtle. “Now, I reunite my family,” Klaus says. The part he leaves out: the ones I stabbed for betraying me at various times and kept in boxes in various storage facilities like a collection of really creepy dolls.

Awesomely, Stefan does not leave that part out. “You mean the ones you cart around in caskets,” he deadpans. Subtle!

“None of that matters anymore,” Klaus says. Now that Mikael’s gone, it’s party time for Family Original. Klaus follows this with “Seems the Homecoming Queen is still among the living, which leads me to believe Rebekah isn’t here yet. Where is she?”

Stefan says he doesn’t know. Klaus gets the first inklings of suspicion and tries to vamp-mojo Stefan, but Stefan just repeats that he doesn’t know where Rebekah is, because he totally doesn’t. He does, however, offer to take Klaus to his father, but Klaus would prefer to stay right where he is: “Bring him to me.” Klaus tells Stefan he can have his freedom right after Mikael is really and truly dead and his weapon is destroyed. No problem, right?

When DAMON thinks you're creepy, you might want to re-think some things.

Stefan goes back to the boarding house, where Damon is having a little blood and lying to Mikael about Rebekah going to the dance. It’s almost sweet that Mikael cares enough to ask. Almost. Anyway, Mikael has the stake and Damon declines to offer him a drink, since Katherine tells him he’s more a “Vampire on the rocks” guy.

“Well technically you could still offer,” Mikael says. Damon looks completely creeped out by the suggestion. Mikael just stares at him impassively and explains that when he created vampires, he never intended there to be blood lust, which apparently strikes him as deeply déclassé. He taught himself to feed from the predator rather than the prey. Dear Mikael: this does not make you less creepy.

I will say this for Evil Stefan: he makes much more entertaining facial expressions.

Stefan breaks up their moment, as Stefan is wont to do, by announcing that Klaus wants Mikael’s corpse delivered to him and all is lost. “He’s certainly not going to come here. Hope your plan didn’t depend on that.”

I haven't been to one of these in a while. It's customary to threaten your host, yeah?

At the Homecoming Dance, Klaus harshes Tyler’s buzz by pointing out that almost all the people at the party were supplied by Hybrids R Us. Oh, so they aren’t Bonnie and Elena’s mostly-ignored schoolmates? My bad. “If anyone should so much as make a move against me, they may feel obligated to retaliate.” Klaus encourages Tyler to share this tidbit with his friends and wanders off, grinning.

But Tyler’s only real friend is Caroline, who totally isn’t in on the big plan, and furthermore wouldn’t tell Tyler if she were, and also then he vervains her and gets Matt to take her away because he doesn’t want her to get hurt. Or Matt, apparently, but that’s just implied. Also boy, is Caroline going to be pissed when she wakes up.

Klaus says he’ll get straight to the point. “People have been after me for a thousand years, and I’ve always been one step ahead. So whatever it is you’re thinking of trying, go for it. Give it your best shot. You won’t succeed.” Apparently this is what Klaus does at parties. Someone should really tell him about Beer Pong.

Hot. ...What?

At the door to the Wolf House, Damon is stopped by a man who says “Invite only. Vampire.”

“Here’s my RSVP,” Damon says, and rips out the man’s heart. “Hybrid.”

Inside, Damon and Tyler get all slap-fighty, so Damon busts out – the Original stake? WTF, Damon?

Also, why does Bonnie care about Tyler? Shouldn't she be all "VAMPIRE SMASH"?

Luckily both boys get a magic migraine care of Bonnie, who is just as WTF about the stake as I am. “You weren’t supposed to kill Tyler!” she shouts.

“He tried to bite me!” Damon says, because when you run that through the DamonLogic filter, yeah, that TOTALLY justifies it.

Bonnie notices the stake, and wants to know why Damon has it. “Because I’m the only one who can get in the house!” he hisses. Ohhhh, right. That actually makes sense. Good job, show!

You thought I was kidding about the beer pong.

Klaus is just taking my advice and learning how to play Beer Pong when one of his hybrids brings him a message that someone is here to see him. “He said his name is Mikael,” the hybrid purrs.

Klaus’ face falls. It’s kind of heartbreaking. You can see the moment when he knows he’s been betrayed. “Then we mustn’t keep him waiting,” he says. He tells the hybrid to move everyone out back so he can chat with his father.

Oh noes! Mikael has Elena. And what pretty hair she has, did I say that already?

Mikael stands just outside the door; Klaus stops just inside. They are British and politely rude at each other for a while, until Klaus mentions that all he has to do is rub his fingers together and his band of hybrids will tear Mikael limb from limb. Mikael just as casually points out the hybrids can still be compelled (by him). He motions one of the hybrids, who produces a struggling, unhappy Elena. “Come out and face me, Niklaus,” Mikael says. “Or she dies.”

“Go ahead,” breathes Klaus. “Kill her. I just need to be rid of you.”

Mikael gets right down to business, and by business I mean emotionally abusing his son something fierce. “So you can live forever with no one at your side? Nobody cares about you anymore, boy. Who do you have, other than those whose loyalty you forced? No one.” I am beginning to support Klaus’ plan to off his father.

They go back and forth like this for a bit, and then Mikael laughs and stabs Elena in the back. She gasps and chokes and falls to the ground.

Then Damon comes out of nowhere and stabs Klaus with the stake. AND MISSES HIS HEART. How could Damon have missed his heart? Damon NEVER misses. They wrestle for a bit, and as they do, Elena stands up from behind Mikael, a smile on her face.

Kaboom.

“Katherine,” Mikael breathes.

Katherine throws a handful of wolfsbane grenades at the hybrids. “Kaboom,” she says. Katherine is the cutest thing ever.

Damon tries to re-stake Klaus, but before he can, Stefan leaps on him and tackles him to the ground. The stake falls out of his hand. “What are you doing?” hisses Damon.

Klaus grabs the stake and leaps at his father, stabbing him neatly through the heart, Damon. Mikael screams and bursts into flames. Guess there’s no second use for that stake?

Inside, Damon is still trying to figure out what Stefan’s stupid problem is. “He’s earned his freedom,” Klaus breathes. (This is Klaus’ preferred communication method. I suspect he spent several bored centuries working as a phone-sex operator.) Stefan stands and Klaus does the woogie-eye thing at him. “You’re free.”

Stefan turns around again, but Damon is gone.

NOT the way Caroline expected to wake up after Homecoming.

Caroline wakes up. She takes in the fact that she’s still in her party dress, and looks up to see Tyler come into the room. He’s still offensively cheerful. “Sorry I stabbed you,” he says, sounding not sorry at all. “It was the only way I could think of to get you out of there.”

Caroline isn’t buying it. She points out that he could have, I don’t know, talked to her and maybe asked her to leave instead of vervaining her in the neck. “How am I supposed to be with you when you’re sired to him?” she wants to know.

“This is who I am,” Tyler says. “Understand that I’m okay with it.” He tells her that being a hybrid is way better than being a werewolf, and even then he didn’t have any control over what happened to him; the full moon controlled him, and now Klaus does, but at least under Klaus he doesn’t have to change unless he wants to. “After everything that we’ve been through, you’ve been there for me through all of it. Don’t turn your back on me now.”

Caroline doesn’t have to say anything. Tyler can see it on her face. She tries, though: “Tyler, I just -”

“Right,” he says, withdrawing from her. “Got it.” He leaves as fast as he can.

Caroline just sits in the bed, looking lost.

At the boarding house, Elena wants to know how this happened.

Angry Damon is angry.Woobie.This is what they call a 'gaze.'Cockblocked by Katherine. AGAIN.

“We thought of everything, Elena,” Damon rages. He’s drinking and furious. He ticks off the ways they were prepared: hybrids, Katherine, Stefan. Maybe if you’d included target practicein that list?

Damon looks dangerously devastated. Elena asks where Katherine went and he says she ran for the hills. “I had Klaus,” he yells brokenly. “This could have all been over.” He throws his bottle into the fireplace.

“Hey,” Elena says, alarmed. She puts her hand on his arm, and when that doesn’t work she puts her hands on either side of his face and forces him to look at her. “We’ll survive this.”

Damon stills. “We’re never getting Stefan back,” he says hollowly.

“Then we’ll let him go,” Elena says. Damon raises his eyes to hers. “Okay? We’ll have to let him go.”

Their moment – which was TOTALLY going to end in a kiss – is interrupted by a ringing phone. Naturally it’s Katherine. “I’m just calling to say goodbye,” she says. “you had a good plan, Damon. And that’s high praise coming from me.”

Damon is not comforted. He asks if she’s going back into hiding; she returns that at least her life isn’t boring.

“Take care of yourself,” Damon says before he hangs up.

Shocking development is shocking.

Katherine sighs. “He doesn’t know where it all went wrong,” she says.

Stefan, who has been sitting next to her in the car the whole time, replies “He doesn’t need to know.”

You can tell it's a flashback because it's all soft-focus.

We get another mini flashback, this time to Katherine reviving Stefan after Mikael did his undead bloodsucker routine. Inside this flashback we get another flashback, this time to Elena (actually Katherine) talking to Klaus at the party. This time the scene goes on a moment or two longer. Klaus explains that she’d be smart to tell Damon to mind his manners tonight: “If I die, I’ve already ensured that he’ll die along with me.” Klaus has programmed his hybrids to kill Damon if anything happens to Klaus.

Flashback again. Katherine is explaining what Klaus said to Stefan. “Care, Stefan,” she says. “Care enough to save Damon’s life.”

Interestingly, that seems to have worked, even though when Elena did the same thing (only about herself) a few episodes ago it had no effect. What? I’m just saying it’s interesting, is all.

In the car, Stefan points out that Katherine has wanted Klaus dead for five hundred years and basically borked her chance. “I wasn’t just trying to save Damon’s life, Stefan. I was trying to save yours.” Stefan gives her a look. “Let’s just say I like the old you better.”

“You and I both know that is not true. I loved you. I loved Damon too.” She doesn’t seem particularly happy to admit that. I bet Damon would have been interested to hear that particular confession, though.

She sighs. “Humanity is a vampire’s greatest weakness,” she says.

Stefan says he doesn’t want to let it back in. “Of course you don’t want to,” Katherine says. “But if you don’t let yourself feel, you won’t be able to do what I need you to do next.” Which is? “Get mad.”

Stefan. Hey. You know what's awesome? EVERYTHING, Also, what are you wearing?THE CORPSES OF YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS. I HAVE STOLEN THEM. Also, what did you just ask me?But I have been hauling them around for years, out of love! Or an equivalent word that also means I will kill you.How many coffins is that exactly?This is Klaus' grrr face.

Next to Rebekah’s lifeless body, her phone is ringing. Dude, how long are they just going to let her lay there? Klaus leaves her a cheerful message about how their father is dead and it’s time for a family reunion. He gets an incoming call from Stefan and clicks over. “Miss me already?” he says.